At the beginning of the year Val’s nephew Greg Machin went to New Zealand, and we told him about some of the Green family relatives living there. Yesterday he met some of them, when he went to have lunch with Denton and Ione Evans in Auckland.

Greg Machin and Ione Evans, Auckland, New Zealand 8 May 2010

Greg and Ione are third cousins twice removed, their nearest common ancestors being William John Green (1790-1866) and his wife Margaret Gray (1795-1844). The Green family lived in Quebec, but after Margaret died in about 1843 (we think in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but are not certain) William John Green and the surviving younger children came to the Cape Colony. One of the brothers, Henry Green, married Ida von Lilienstein, and is Ione’s ancestor, while his younger brother Fred Green was Greg’s great great great great grandfather.

We did not know anything about Ione until she was put in touch with us by Colleen Tapscott (another descendant of Henry Green) in January 2006. Ione was researching the von Lilienstein family, and sent a great deal of information on her branch of the family, descended from Henry Green’s daughter Edith Susanna Green who married Ernest Borwick and went to Kenya, which was why we had not been able to find them.

Greg went to New Zealand to be closer to his daughter Abby, who went there with her mother Sharon and Sharon’s husband about 18 months ago. He works in computer networking, and is hoping to find a job in New Zealand. Ione was born and grew up in Kenya, and after leaving school went to London, where she married Denton Evans (who grew up in the Falkland Islands and later lived in Kenya; his father has written an interesting book about the Falkland Islands). After their marriage Denton and Ione went to New Zealand, and all their children were born there.

One of the long-enduring mysteries of the GREEN family history has at last been solved, thanks to Ione Evans of New Zealand.

Henry Green, the British Resident of the Orange River Sovereignty in the early 1850s, came to South Africa some time in the 1840s, as did several of his siblings, including Fred (Val’s great great grandfather), Edward, Charles and Arthur.

It was known that Henry Green married Ida Carolina von Lilienstein, daughter of Count von Lilienstein, but little was known about her parents. Many of their descendants have tried to find out more, especially her mother’s name, but without success.

Ione Evans asked a researcher to check German records, and and finally found:

Congregation of Itzehoe, Christenings in the year 1836, daughters, page No 11, born on 4 December 1835, christened on 24 December 1835 Ida Caroline Johanna, legitimate daughter of local constable at the regiment of light dragoon, Carl Arthur Count zu LILIENSTEIN and Catharina Elise née STAEKER, christened by me at home. God parents: Carl von BARDENFLETH, colonel and head of the regiment, Martin von WILEMOOS SUHM, Premier Major, Johannes von EWALD, major (translation)

This will be especially good news for descendants of Henry and Ida, as Ida’s ancestors will be theirs as well, but for the rest of us too, the irritating gap waiting to be filled by “Spouse’s mother” can at last be filled.

In the course of our researches into the Green family we have met several descendants of Henry and Ida, and corresponded with many more. Some of them have been enthusiastic researchers into the family history, and many of them have helped us a great deal with our researches. We were in correspondence for a while with Hal Green in Swaziland. Jack and Peggy (nee Tapscott) Stokes visited us when we lived in Melmoth in Zululand, and stayed several days with their caravan in our back yard, and we spent many evening poring over family records, trying to sort out chronology and relationships.

One of the longest-standing mysteries (to us, at any rate) was what happened to Edith Susanna Green, daughter of Henry and Ida. She had married Ernest Borwick and then, apparently, disappeared off the face of the earth. Then we made contact with Ione Evans, a descendant of that branch, who filled in several generations. Ernest Borwick farmed in Kenya, and several of their seven children lived there, and some married and moved to other countries. Ione Evans is still following up some of the descendants, but has also been working backwards on the von (or zu) Lilienstein side as well, for which we are all grateful.